Transhuman (6 page)

He picked up on earlier research on the effect of telomeres on cell biology. It took years of patient, unspectacular experiments, but eventually he was able to show how to rejuvenate aged, decrepit lab mice and make them youthful again—by triggering their telomeres to regrow.

And then his granddaughter was stricken by glioblastoma multiforme. Luke was devastated by the news. But he quickly realized that by inhibiting the growth of Angela's cells' telomeres—rather than accelerating their growth—he might be able to destroy the tumors that were killing her.

The bureaucracies that controlled scientific research refused to allow him to leap from experiments with lab mice to an effort to save his granddaughter's life. So be it, Luke thought.

He went his own way. With his granddaughter. They call you stubborn when what you're doing doesn't work. When it does work they call you goal-oriented.

 

University of Pennsylvania

V
AN McALLISTER'S EXPRESSION
was somewhere between disbelief and curiosity.

“You mean you've taken the child out of the hospital and brought her here?”

McAllister had one of those smiling, bright-eyed faces that still would look youthful when he was Luke's age. But he wasn't smiling now. He was leaning his slim rump on a bench in his campus laboratory, facing Luke, who was perched on a lab stool. No one else was in the lab; the previous night's snowfall had snarled Philadelphia traffic so badly that Luke had been half an hour late for his meeting with his former student, yet still none of the lab staff had shown up

“With her attending physician,” Luke said.

“Isn't that … unusual?”

“It's all perfectly legal, if that's what you're worrying about.”

“What did her parents say about this?”

“That's not important,” Luke temporized. “What I need to do is get the necessary enzymes to activate the genes that will suppress her telomerase production.”

“For how long?”

“A few days, maybe a week or two. I want to get her to Bartram's facility out in Oregon.”

McAllister gave out a low whistle. “Why didn't you fly straight there from Boston?”

Luke waggled a hand in the air. “We're driving. I need to start Angie on the telomerase inhibitors right away. By the time we get to Oregon I expect her to be showing signs of improvement.”

“But the side effects…”

“Her physician is coming along with us.”

McAllister stood up, his youthful face deadly serious. “Prof, telomerase inhibitors? You know what that could do to the kid?”

Luke nodded, tight-lipped.

“You're running the risk of progeria, for God's sake.”

“I know. But once we've killed the cancer we can reverse the progeria symptoms.”

“You hope.”

“I'm going to start taking telomerase inducers,” Luke said.

“What?”

“I'm too old to be running across country like this. I need to be younger. Stronger.”

“You're not a lab mouse, for God's sake!”

Forcing a grin, Luke said, “Anything those mice can do, I can do.”

“That's crazy! You can't—”

Luke pushed himself to his feet. “Van, I can and I will. We're talking about my granddaughter's life. I'll do whatever I have to do to save her.”

“Including putting your own life on the line?”

“Yes.”

“Your telomerase experiments aren't ready for a human trial. No way!”

“I'm volunteering.”

“And you expect me to help you?”

“Nobody needs to know you're involved, Van. This'll be just between you and me.”

“We'll have to sign the kid into the hospital.”

“No. We'll take care of her in the motel.”

“In the motel?”

“Listen to me, Van,” Luke coaxed. “We're not talking about surgery or radiation treatment. We don't need big facilities. Just the proper enzymes and a little time. Angie's comfortable at the motel, and her physician is keeping watch over her.” With some heat he added, “Hell, they wanted to hand her over to Hospice, for God's sake. Do you think they'd do anything more for Angie than we will?”

McAllister shook his head. “I could get fired for this. You know that.”

“I know it. But will you do it?”

The younger man turned away and walked down the aisle between lab benches. Luke stood there, watching, waiting. He saw through the lab's windows that the last clouds from the previous night's snowstorm were blowing away. The sky outside was turning a brilliant blue.

“Nobody else will be involved?” McAllister asked, his back still to Luke.

“All I need is the enzymes, and you can get them without any trouble.”

“They're steroids.”

“But they're not on a restricted list. It's not like we're going to be doping athletes.”

Turning back to face Luke, McAllister said, “I'd be sticking my neck out. Way out.”

“I know. I appreciate it.”

McAllister heaved a big sigh. “For you, Prof. I'll do it for you.”

Before Luke could thank him the phone rang.

McAllister went to his desk, at the end of the lab bench. “Hello,” he said into the phone.

Holding a hand over the mouthpiece, he said to Luke, “Department secretary. Probably giving me a tally of who's coming in, who's going to be late.”

Then his eyes widened with surprise. “The FBI? Yes, okay, put him on.”

Luke sank back onto the lab stool, his heart suddenly racing.

“Agent Hightower,” McAllister said. “Yes, this is Professor McAllister. Assistant professor, actually.”

McAllister listened, his eyes focusing on Luke.

“You say there's no criminal charges? Then what's the FBI—”

He fell silent again. At last he nodded and said, “Yes, I understand. Yes, certainly. Good-bye.”

McAllister hung up the phone and leaned on it with both his hands. At last he straightened up and turned to face Luke.

“That was an FBI agent. They're looking for you.”

Luke asked, “He said there weren't any criminal charges filed?”

“Not yet. But once they've satisfied themselves that you've taken the kid outside of Massachusetts, they'll call it kidnapping. That's a federal offense.”

Luke thought, Lenore wouldn't accuse me of kidnapping. She knows I wouldn't hurt Angie. But Del would. He's pissed at me. And they're both scared that Angie's in danger.

As if she'd be any safer back in the hospital.

 

Boston FBI Headquarters

S
PECIAL AGENT JEROME
Hightower stepped into the office of the director of the FBI's Boston division. The division's chief was standing at the window in his shirtsleeves and bright red suspenders, watching a snowplow pushing mounds of dirty gray snow onto a black sedan parked at the curb on Cambridge Street. His hands were clasped behind his back; Hightower saw that one of them held a yellow travel requisition form.

“Some idiot down there parked right under a no-parking sign last night,” said the director. “He'll be snowed in until next April, I bet.”

Hightower peered over the director's shoulder. “Nah,” he contradicted. “The city will dig him out, then tow him away and impound the car. He'll owe a fortune by the time he gets it back.”

The director shrugged. “Must be some politician who thought he could park wherever he pleases.”

“Maybe somebody from police headquarters,” Hightower said, with a grim smile.

“Have a seat, Jerry,” the director said. He was a slim, dapper man who'd been with the agency since he'd acquired his degree in accounting, a quarter century ago. Even in his shirtsleeves and suspenders he looked stylish.

Hightower, wearing a comfortable old suede jacket over his creaseless slacks, settled himself in the only chair in front of the director's desk. The director sat on his swivel chair, which rolled slightly, and placed the travel request on his desk, smoothing it carefully with both hands. He had never been comfortable with Hightower's ponytail, it wasn't the Bureau's style, but he knew Hightower would put in a formal complaint if he tried to get him to cut it off. Native American rights and all that crap.

The director put a smile on his face and asked mildly, “What's going on, Jerry? Are you wasting this office's precious resources?”

Despite the smile, Hightower knew the question was serious.

“Might be a kidnapping,” he said.

“Might be?”

Hightower shrugged his massive shoulders. “Child's been taken from University Hospital.”

“By her grandfather, I'm told.”

“Right. But without the parents' knowledge. Or approval.”

“The kid's sick?”

“Terminal. Brain cancer.”

“Why'd the grandfather take her?”

“According to the parents, he's some kind of biologist. A research scientist. Claims he can cure the kid.”

“Can he?”

“Probably not. The parents don't know where he's taken her. They want to file a kidnap charge.”

The director leaned back in his swivel chair and tapped his fingertips together. “Has he taken the kid out of the state?”

“Don't know for sure.”

“How'd you get involved in this?”

“Got a call from the hospital's top man. Odom Wexler.”

The director nodded and murmured, “He's pretty close to the governor.”

“A couple of congressmen, too,” Hightower added.

“And what've you done so far?”

Hightower figured that his boss already knew the answers to the questions he was asking. But he went ahead and recited, “Put a tap on the parents' phone, in case he calls them. Checking out his known acquaintances. He's got contacts all over the country. Apparently he's a big shot in the biology field.”

Again the director tapped his fingertips together. Then, “So what's your gut tell you, Jerry? Has he taken the kid out of the state?”

“Hell yes. None of the people he's worked with here have seen him since the day before yesterday. He's on the run with his granddaughter—and mostly likely one of the doctors from the hospital, the kid's attending physician.”

“So where's he gone?”

“Don't know yet.” Pointing to the travel requisition, he said, “I'd like to pop down to Washington, talk to some people at the National Institutes of Health who've worked with him in the past.”

The director looked into Hightower's steady brown eyes. “All right. Charge him with suspicion of kidnapping. Send out a nationwide alert.”

“You're okaying my travel request?”

The director nodded. “Let's get this guy before the news media get wind of this and start squawking.”

*   *   *

N
EW YORK CITY
had been spared the brunt of the snowstorm. As he ducked out of his limousine, Quenton Fisk muttered to himself, “Snow doesn't get a chance to stick on the sidewalks. Too many pedestrians stomping on it.”

Hunching his shoulders against the cold, he hurried to the glass front door of the Fisk Tower. It opened automatically for him. Once inside he went straight to his personal elevator, where a uniformed security woman smiled a good morning to him. Fisk ignored her as he held his ID card before the elevator's digital reader; the doors slid open immediately. The otherwise empty car whisked him directly to his private office on the top floor.

Fisk was a small, intense man, wiry and still trimly athletic in his fifties. He hardly ever lost at squash or tennis; if the other players allowed him to win, he took it as nothing less than what he deserved. He had inherited millions and spent his life working tirelessly to turn them into billions. The Fisk Corporation was heavily involved in the electronics, aerospace, and biomedical industries. He had the good sense to back cutting-edge research in each of those areas—especially biomed.

His private office was a masterpiece of understated luxury: tasteful oils on two walls, the third a broad window that looked out at Manhattan's forest of skyscrapers. The fourth wall was a mosaic of display screens, four of them showing financial news channels, muted. The rest were dark.

Fisk's executive assistant was waiting for him, of course, a tall fortyish woman with red hair pinned up sensibly, wearing a conservatively dark green skirted suit. As she took his fedora and helped him shrug out of his cashmere overcoat she said, “You received a call from the FBI this morning.”

“The FBI?” Fisk's brow furrowed. “Who? Why?”

“He said his name was Jerome Hightower and he was calling about a Dr. Luke Abramson.”

“Abramson? Who's he?”

“I've put his file on your main menu.”

Fisk nodded and went to his desk while his executive assistant tiptoed out of the room. As he slipped into his high-backed black leather chair and reached for the insulated cup of coffee that was waiting for him, he saw his reflection in the dark screen of his desktop computer and noticed that his hair was slightly awry. Smoothing it, he thought that getting the implants had been a good investment: He still looked dark-haired and handsome while other men his age and even younger were balding.

He took a sip of the hot coffee. Luke Abramson. The name sounded vaguely familiar. Activating his computer, he saw the scientist's image and realized that he had met the man, more than once. The last time … Fisk thought back and recalled the fund-raising dinner up in Boston, last August. Abramson had been the after-dinner speaker, talking about his research on reversing aging. He'd apparently made some decrepit old mice young again. Fisk had taken the man aside afterward and offered him a research grant, on the spot. Abramson agreed immediately, complaining that NIH had abruptly dropped his funding a few months earlier.

Frowning at the screen, he saw that the FBI was making inquiries about him. Nothing specific, but the FBI didn't get interested in a person for trivial reasons.